GUWAHATI: The Bureau of Indian Standards announced its New Initiatives on Tuesday. BIS standards are now available free of cost for everyone according to P.K.Tiwari, Director General, Bureau of Indian Standards. A booklet on BIS reforms has also been launched. Leena Nandan, Secretary, Department of Consumer Affairs and Pramod Kumar Tiwari addressed a virtual press conference about the New Initiatives of BIS.
Some of the new initiatives are:
> Quarterly meeting of Sectional Committees
> Stage-wise timeframe for every Standard under development or revision
> Action Research to be an integral part the process
> Broad-banding of consultation process through Standardization Cells in Ministries and Industry Associations
> Better provisioning of Human Resources to ensure that one Scientific Officer does not deal with more than 30 standards in a year
> Initiation of revision of standards parallel to formulation or revision of corresponding ISO/IEC standards for prompt harmonization.
P.K. Tiwari informed that BIS have nearly 21000 Indian Standards. The objective is to ensure a genius standard for every product relevant for the national economy and consumers. The DG said that for the benefit of industry, particularly the MSME sector, Indian Standards are now available free of cost, and can be downloaded from the Standardization Portal of e-BIS.
Tiwari further informed that the Scheme of One Nation One Standard has been launched to harmonize the standard formulation work happening in various organizations. Process of consultation is on with SDOs like RDSO, Indian Road Congress, and Directorate of Standardization under Ministry of Defence etc.
As regards Conformity Assessment, he informed that several steps have been taken to ease the compliance burden on the stakeholders like Automation of entire process of certification, including grant of license, renewal of license, and inclusion is automated through Manak Online Portal of e-BIS, Strict timelines for the disposal of applications and real-time basis monitoring of compliance, Introduction of the system of automatic renewal of licenses, Substantial reduction in the Minimum Marking fee i.e 50% for Micro industry and start-ups and women entrepreneurs and old licence holders will also get additional 10% rebate, More than 80 percent products being brought under Simplified Procedure. This means license for the manufacturing of these products will be granted within a period of one month, System of consultation with applicants introduced at the stage of Scrutiny of Application to avoid delay in processing. He informed that as a result of these initiatives, it has been possible to dispose of more than 90 percent applications within the prescribed time frame.
Further in his briefing about the initiatives, he said to make Hallmarking of gold jewellery and artifacts a credible and transparent process, BIS has taken following steps like Online and automatic system of jeweller registration, Automation of the entire process of the assaying and Hallmarking, Mobile App based system of Market Surveillance and audit of Assaying and Hallmarking Centres and Launch of Certificate Course in Hallmarking to ensure the availability of qualified manpower.
The DG, BIS informed about the creating quality consciousness in the country, among the consumers, industry, Govt. departments, academic and research institutions, is of primary importance to create demand for standards.
Tiwari stated that several steps that have been taken includes
> Standardization Cells in Ministries and Industry Associations
> Focus on increased consultation with Industry in a structured manner
> MoUs with premier educational institutions like IITs, IIMs and NLUs
> Creation of an Expert Group for integration of standards with the curricula of engineering and professional institutions
> Creation of Standards Clubs in High Schools and colleges.
Also, development of Consumer Engagement and Training Portals as part of eBIS, Development of educational videos under the title BIS TALKS, Direction to Govt. organizations and PSUs to use only Indian Standards and certification by BIS and List of standards shared with Ministries to bring more products under Quality Control Orders (QCOs).
